


no one sees me, no one but you

by courageous_boss



Series: you've always loved the strange birds [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bruce is dead, Gen, damian misses his dad, dick is sad and lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 03:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15922328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courageous_boss/pseuds/courageous_boss
Summary: Dick wakes up, eight-years-old and tiny. Bruce isn't there.





	no one sees me, no one but you

Dick wakes feeling small – tiny and little and insignificant in his body – and very, very wrong. He feels smaller still when Alfred’s eyes turn misty and Bruce isn’t there and he’s all alone in the infirmary. Wally doesn’t visit, and Roy doesn’t sneak in. Even Babs doesn’t come by, and she _always_ visits him when he’s injured as Robin.

Alfred makes him his favourite foods, but the man can't hold a conversation without his voice going tight and shaky, which makes Dick feel hollow inside. He keeps waiting for Bruce to turn up, with his grumpy face and grumpy noises and grumpy words. Bruce makes him feel better at times like this – when he feels scared and lost and so very _small_.

Clark is the first traffic into the Cave since Dick had been quarantined in there and comes with a smile and a Superman patterned blanket. It’s warm and soft. Dick tucks it around himself and pretends that he’s up in his room, and not stuck in the Cave waiting for Batman.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?” Clark asks him, looking and sounding the same as Dick remembers. Dick feels something heavy break in his chest and he feels a thousand times lighter. Finally, something he recognizes. Everything has been so different, but Superman will never let him down.

“Bored,” Dick pouts, pushes out his bottom lip and lets it wobble. It’s a look that even Bruce has trouble denying.

“You’ll have company soon enough,” Clark answers cryptically and offers no other information. He sits and talks though, which is more than Dick has received from anyone for a while now. Then, Alfred returns, face grey and sickly looking, and gives Clark a look that has the man fleeing. Dick has never had it in his heart to hate the old butler, but as he watches Clark’s retreating figure, he finds that he really doesn’t like Alfred.

 

* * *

 

The ninth day since he’d woken, there’s loud commotion as a group of boys amble down the stairs. Alfred follows on their heels, baring a tray of tea and cookies. The boys are all much older than him, and the biggest one looks like he might actually be a grown up. They bicker amongst themselves as they walk but fall silent as their eyes land on him. They’re an intimidating bunch, but Dick can't feel any more vulnerable than he already does, so he puts on a smile and waves.

“Hello,” he doesn’t have his mask, but they’re in the Cave. For all his lessons, Bruce had never prepared him for an introduction of this sort. He glances at Alfred and decides that he’s Robin right now. “I’m Robin.”

The boys gape at him, eyes wide and unblinking for a few, long moments until the big, brawny one breaks into a fit of loud, raucous laughter.

“Oh, this is gold. He’s so tiny,” he pushes out between laughs, his words tilted with disdain.

The two other boys glare at him, the lanky one jabbing an elbow into the laughing boy. His actions only trigger more laughter. Dick knows he’s supposed to take offence, but they’re company and he can't find it in himself to complain.

“Master Dick,” Alfred says, eyes serious and wrinkled at the edges, “This is Jason,” the brute, “Tim,” the one with the sharp elbows, “and Damian,” the last boy.

Dick glares at Alfred, he needs to be Robin right now. Not Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson is lonely and afraid; he hasn’t seen Bruce for nearly two weeks and that can't mean anything good. Robin is trained and strong and independent. He doesn’t need Batman to be there to be a hero.

Damian steps forward, lips tilted down and eyebrows thick and bushy. He introduces himself as Bruce’s son, which Dick had worked out already. After all, he’s training to be a detective and Damian looks and moves so much like Bruce.

“When’s Bruce coming?” Dick asks. When Damian says nothing, he adds, “I miss him.”

Jason and Tim disappear up the stairs with Alfred and Damian sits on the edge of the bed. He pats the spot beside him and Dick only obliges because he doesn’t want to be rude to the first person to offer answers.

“My name is Damian Wayne, and I’m sixteen years old,” Damian says, very seriously. He hasn’t smiled once since Dick has seen him. Not even when Jason had called Tim a shrivelled-up carrot.

“Nice to meet you Damian,” Dick says. His chest runs cold with something smooth and sharp that he knows is jealousy. He doesn’t tune in to it, though. Damian is Bruce’s son, blood relative. Dick is Bruce’s ward.

“You’re Dick Grayson,” Damian continues, “and you’re twenty-seven years old.”

And – oh. That explains it, then. He’s twenty-seven. Okay. Sure. Wait, “What?”

“I’m sure you noticed Alfred’s older than you remember?” Damian says, still serious, still frowning.

Dick looks down at his body, small and tiny and definitely not grown. Damian sees him, “You’ve been shrunk back to a child.”

Damian continues then, about how Dick will live with Alfred and go to school again. He talks about the plans they’ve made, after school clubs to help him make friends and who’ll look after him when Alfred can't. He explains about Tim and Jason and Cassandra, who have all been adopted into the Wayne family and tells him what happened to Wally and Roy and little Lian. But. He doesn’t speak about Robin, and he never mentions Bruce’s name.

“No,” Dick says, hopping off the bed. “I won’t do what you say. I only listen to Bruce.”

The cold, sheltered look Damian’s been wearing slips off his face, revealing something Dick recognizes. And, oh. Why hadn’t Alfred told him? Or Clark?

Damian gears himself up to say the words, but Dick already knows. He can read the look in his eyes, the pull of his lips. He’s seen it in Bruce, and when he looks in the mirror. He can’t bear to see it in Damian too. He rests one hand on Damian’s own, laid across the older boy’s lap, and puts the other one against Damian’s chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry your father is dead.”

 

* * *

 

Bruce is dead, and Robin is no more. Jason drops by once more, but Dick doesn’t really like him. He’s angry at the world, and Bruce. He misses his father, Dick can see it in his eyes. Dick digs out one of the note books Bruce had given him, it’s leather and smells like candles, and gives it to Jason. Dick pretends to not see the heartbreak in the man’s eyes as he stomps away.

Tim never visits him.

Alfred lets him back into the manor, but he has a new room. This one is closer to Damian’s. Damian is kind and strong. He walks around with loss on his shoulders and braves what he must. Alfred cooks spicy foods that smell like Miss Mona’s trailer. Damian is sad a lot and Dick can tell he misses his father. The teenager is scary and loud, especially in the evenings, when Batman would usually be preparing for patrol. There are no patrols anymore, there is no Batman, and there is no Robin.

Sometimes, Dick looks at Damian and only sees Bruce. He looks so much like him, with his eyes and his hair and his grumpy frown. His accent is different, but his voice sounds the same. It makes Dick’s chest ache, but he doesn’t complain. He can't complain.

Because.

Because Bruce had a son. And another. And another. And a daughter. They’re all his family and they miss him dearly. They cry, and they yell, and they hurt for him. They miss their father. Bruce was their dad, and he loved them.

Dick thinks that given more time, Bruce might have grown to love him too. He’d have wormed his way into the man’s heart and made him smile more often and laugh a lot. They’d be the greatest team, and Bruce would be his dad and he’d be Bruce’s son. They’d be family.

But they’re not. Dick is eight years old and Bruce is dead already. Dick had only known him for a few months now, and he’s just his ward. Not a son, not family. He hasn’t known Bruce like Jason knew him. He hadn’t fought alongside him like Tim had. He wasn’t his son like Damian was. He hadn’t even had a birthday with him.

Every night, when Alfred has long gone to bed and they should both be asleep, Dick hears Damian crying. He creeps down the hall and slinks into the room. He never slips into Damian’s bed (only Bruce had ever let that happen), but he holds Damian’s hand and sings songs. Mostly, he sings Romani songs his tati would sing to him. Dick lets Damian cry, and never interrupts or hushes. Damian is missing his father and he has a right to grieve.

Dick decides, that the eight-year-old circus boy that Bruce had never truly loved, had no such right.


End file.
